


a special disguise

by aes3plex



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Implied Fix-It, M/M, everyone lives!, getting dressed in the nineteenth century when you are also naturally inclined to melancholy.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:46:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21906955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aes3plex/pseuds/aes3plex
Summary: A particular gift, to be allowed to watch Francis dress.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 6
Kudos: 73
Collections: 12 Days of Carnivale ~ 2018





	a special disguise

**Author's Note:**

> This was written & posted [on Tumblr](https://aes-iii.tumblr.com/post/181101443761/a-special-disguise-crozierfitzjames-930-words) for 12 Days of Carnivale 2018. G except for a brief explicit mention of sex at the end.

A particular gift, to be allowed to watch Francis dress. 

Lying in the tangled sheets in the thin morning light which is grey as a dove and winter cool, James turns his head. Downstairs, somewhere, John laying table, Henry in from the yard, their voices just at the edge of hearing. Fire cold in the grate but he is warm under blankets except where air finds its way to skin.

And Francis: buttoning his trousers, now, still a bit too loose; his waistcoat open, hanging; his black tie still untied. Over the chair his full dress coat, already epauletted, and beside the chair, his boots which James gave to him, FRMC tooled into the leather. He’d said _I’ll never wear them,_ but he does.

“Christ,” Francis says, under his breath, with his fingers at his collar. “If Tom were here–”

“If Tom were here, Edward would be short a lieutenant,” James says. 

“Oh,” says Francis, barely flicking him a glance. “You’re awake, are you.” That acute angle to his tone which says he is unhappy. James rolls: pushes himself up onto his elbows. his ribs are sore, today, but his arm barely smarts.

Francis with his fingers on his buttons, now, closing waistcoat over shirt. He has never quite learned the talent of disappearing into it, James thinks: he makes a fine captain, staid and steady, but the man always shows through.

“It would help,” James says, “if you had a glass.” There is one in the corner, hauled out of some closet at James’s request, but Francis has his back to it like a girl jilted at a ball.

“It would not,” Francis says, firmly.

“Let me, then,” James says. Still it takes him a moment to slip from the sheaf of the covers; under his bare feet the oak floor is cold as ice. Funny, he thinks, how the body forgets.

Francis is waiting for him.

It is hardly the first time James has tied another man’s tie, but the confusion of doing it backwards remains, and though John had carefully laid out the faultless black silk last night somehow since then it has creased itself and must be adjusted, worked and adjusted, into its precise shape. There is a satisfaction in getting it right. _Hand, reef and steer_ , James thinks, amused with himself: _if only this had been on the exam._

In front of him Francis sighs, his eyes fixed somewhere over James’s shoulder. “ _Why_ you aren’t coming–” he says, accusatory, and then quits the thought. For all his stiff objections there is a tone of longing which cuts through the heart of it: to be done with it, James supposes, and back here in his shirtsleeves, telling James how foolish it all is. At his side his fingers twitch for something to hold. 

“I’ve _been_ ,” James says, amused. “Only you slipped the noose once already.” He finishes with Francis’s tie–tucks its ends–buttons the last two buttons of his waistcoat. Swats away the hand Francis brings to his own throat: “You’ll spoil it,” he says, nearly laughing.

“Likely,” Francis says, so sour that James has to smile: catch his wandering hand and press a kiss to the knuckles. There is a faint tremor to it, barely noticeable, which has never left him since his illness. James kisses that, too, at the joint of the thumb.

“Your sword?” James says, into Francis’s curled hand. Kiss: the heel, now, and the palm.

“John has it,” Francis says. “And the hat.” Ease is creeping back into his voice. 

“You might have woken me earlier,” James says. Kiss: the inside of the wrist, at the edge of the sleeve.

“And gone to the palace well fucked? I think not.” He sounds amused, now, as he tugs his hand away.

At last he turns to the mirror: sighs. Tugs at the hem of his waistcoat. James collects his coat from the chair–shakes it out–holds it for him to slip into, which he does without pulling his gaze from the glass. He buttons it slowly, breathing through his nose, though it is loose if anything: long practice, James thinks, of last year’s cut, of buttons a little short of holes. It sends a curl of something warm through him.

“Well,” Francis says, after a moment, “Will it do?”

“I daresay I may be the wrong man to ask,” James says, and smooths a hand across his back at the shoulder: straightens a piece of bullion. In the glass his eye catches Francis’s: Francis looking pale and miserable, here of all places in the world, despite the perfect tie.

“Perfect,” James says. Francis makes a noise of derision and James leans forward to set his chin on Francis’s shoulder: brings his hands to Francis’s waist, to rest. “A model captain. Respectable. Unassailable.” This is true: the impression is a complete one. Any seaman would swear fealty in an instant.

“Old, then,” says Francis, beginning to smile–never more amused than when he is his own subject. 

“ _Go_ ,” James says. “Don’t keep her majesty waiting.”

“Sir James,” says Francis, bitterly.

“Sir Francis,” says James, with half a bow.

“Not bloody _yet_ ,” says Francis, and steals a kiss before he turns.

(That night James will undo the coat: the waistcoat: the trousers. Stripped of it all Francis is somehow still himself: scarred, pocked, powderburned, frostbitten. Bitter as quinine. On his back, with his heels dug into the bed and James between his thighs he will open his mouth and say _love_ without disguising it at all.)


End file.
